Giuseppe Garibaldi

In the communes occupied by the enemy's forces, every citizen is bound to refuse to the Bourbonic government payment of the taxes, which taxes from this day henceforth belong to the nation.

The Italian patriots know how to discriminate between good and bad priests, many of whom are their enemies, either open or secret, but some of whom have always been their staunch friends.

No one murmured; indeed the patience and cheerfulness of the volunteers are beyond all praise.

Some of them, many of them, are from the first Italian families, who have never known a hardship in their lives; here they cannot even lie down to sleep, but huddle together, rolled up like balls; many have to stand all night.

If the Neapolitans respect these 3,600 Sicilian exiles going home, we may thank the stars and stripes under which we sail.

Half the youth of the towns are under arms; young boys of 12 or 13 break their parents' hearts by declaring themselves, every one of them, irrevocably bent on becoming soldiers.

There are fourteen universities, and at least four times as many lyceums in the North Italy kingdom, and all of them are virtually closed, for nearly all the students, and many of the professors, are under arms.

Those scholars whom mature age unfits for warlike purposes, either sit in parliament, or go out to Palermo to lend a hand to the provisional Italian government.

The very name of the dictator inspired electric enthusiasm.

I repeat it, concord is the first want of Italy, so we will welcome as brothers those who once disagreed with us, but now sincerely wish to bring their stone to raise up the monument of our country.

Finally, respecting other people's houses: we are resolved to be masters in our own house, whether the powerful of the earth like it or not.

It was no bad emblem of the whole sea and land might of the Bourbon—worse than useless against foreign aggression, wholly and exclusively directed to crush internal commotion.

All political prisoners are to be liberated immediately.

All custom-house barriers between Sicily and the Neapolitan continent are abolished.

Twelve infant asylums, one for each quarter, are to be established in the capital at the public expense, and are to be municipal institutions.

The trial by jury in criminal cases is to be established.

The order of Jesuits, with all their dependencies, is abolished in the territory.

All contracts on property for the benefit of the order are annulled.

The people are wild with joy at their deliverance.

Extraordinary are the ravages of the royal troops—villas sacked and burned.

SIRE: Your majesty knows the high esteem and the devotion which I feel toward your majesty; but such is the present state of things in Italy, that, at the present moment, I cannot obey your majesty's injunctions, much as I should like it.

I am called for and urged on by the people of Naples.

But if I should now hesitate, I should endanger the cause of Italy, and not fulfill my duty as an Italian.

As soon as I shall have done with the task imposed upon me by the wishes of the people, who groan under the tyranny of the Neapolitan Bourbon, I shall lay down my sword at your majesty's feet, and shall obey your majesty for the remainder…

But the seeds of intelligence have been assiduously sown and cherished of late years by the patriotic societies of Italy, who by their cautious, yet often daring and hazardous efforts, have long since brought many of the poor and rude, but…